1) Over simplification can make the answer too drastic or just plain wrong or can misidentify or misrepresent the problem. I suppose that means things get more complicated and.... which takes me to

2) Generalizations tend to be oversimplifications. Not all Unis are as you describe them. Who is the sponsor of this distance learning course? Is it a part of an well known and accredited University?

Um... well, as somebody who helps people figure out some fairly complicated stuff (both here and elsewhere)... my feelings on this are:

1. You can never make things "too simple". You can, however, make things look "simple" by avoiding necessary steps. This is a problem, no matter what you're teaching.

I ran into this not long ago, when I made a tutorial here about how to skin 3D models- something that I regard as being "simple", but most people find very difficult to get the hang of, including many people who are proficient in 3D modeling techniques and methods.

After getting feedback, I added quite a few "pages" to the book, and all of a sudden... boom... people started getting it. I'd basically just skipped over some steps that were, to me, quite obvious. To newbies, they were bottomless chasms. Teaching is tricky.

2. There are some things that are hard no matter how simple you make them, because there are certain steps that are difficult and cannot be done by following directions.

Explaining how to gut large portions of Freelancer's codebase, for example, can be done- but how to explain to anybody who doesn't already have a very good grasp of the complexities involved? I can't- and when I try, I realise that my explanations aren't going to help most readers much at all, because they just lack too much context.


Basically, there is no excuse for how poorly-written most CS texts are, and if you're going to do all of your courses via Distance Learning... get a tutor, because the texts will generally stay that way.

Think about it for a moment. Your books are written by dweebs who aren't quite hot enough to be in the Industry making massive $$$ (read, professors) to impress their fellow dweebs (faculty administrators) so that they can become promoted (to administrators) and continue the process. It's not that they don't want to educate you, but many of them aren't so hot themselves. If you're lucky, you'll get somebody who just recently burned out, and they'll still be sharp enough to be worth learning from. Most of the professors I dealt with were has-beens who thought FORTRAN was still a hot language

99% of the theory you will learn in school will not get used in the real world, unless you happen to be so brilliant and theoretically-inclined that you're slotted for high-end government research projects with supercomputers or other exotica, where you might actually give a damn about some of the statistical coding techniques you'll be presented with in class. 99% of the people with CS degrees either don't use them, or program for companies in the real world... who want you to be clever but not waste time being perfectly cute. I work with real-world programmers, and they're generally fitting new programming jobs in with lots of other IT tasks. It's not fancy-schmancy stuff- it's work.

Almost 100% of the theory you learn in the first year will actually be useful as a backbone, until technology changes the rules again. The vast majority of the theory you learn later will be largely useless, and greatly outdated by the time you graduate.

All I have to say to young CS majors is this: get into internships as rapidly as possible. Pass your classes, enjoy school, but get Real World Experience, or your vaunted "hard science" degree that you've worked so hard for will be worth as much as an English Major's... and they, at least, got to read well-written texts and good books If you don't want your post-graduate world to include phrases like, "do you want fries with that?", keep your head out of the clouds, and remember... you're spending all that time and money to get a job not to learn. Idealism about education is one of the educational establishment's biggest ways to confuse young people about how poorly they're preparing them to compete in today's international economy... don't fall for it. Even if you're going to Haaavahd, you're still going to vocational school.

@indy...yea I generalized there, shouldn't have actually This is not part of a uni, the whole uni is a long distance uni, I forget the proper name now...I think its the biggest long distance uni in the world, but I might be wrong, should check again. UNISA

@Argh, it could be that he was skipping over steps, but I dont really think so, he goes to such lengths to explain the stuff to you that you actually lose what he is trying to say and the he throws in all these absurd stories to try to make it easier, but which actually confuses you. While I was studying and re writing it for myself, I found places where he uses a whole page explaining something, leaving you puzzled, to suddenly realise what he is trying to say and then you can write it down for yourself in two sentences making much more sense.

In a way I guess it depends on the way you understand things. Different people understand differently. I dunno, it just seems useless that he spends all this time trying to explain the work to you and then you still cannot understand it, because the explanation is too complicated.

Does that make sense? I dont know. Usually I dont make sense.

Edited by - sycho warrior on 9/26/2005 1:28:34 PM

I'm in college, and I can honestly say two things:

1) Over-simplification, I dunno, never ran into it

2) Text books are hard to understand because there aren't students writing these things. They're PhD's or other people high up in the level of academics.

Frankly, I find not only are textbooks sometimes trying too hard to sound "smart" they're WAAAAAY over priced. I know every college students gripes about it, but seriously, when I pay $122 for a textbook, and the university bookstore buys it back at $47, then puts a "used" sticker on it, and then puts it back on the shelf for $99 I get pretty peeved.

I've had a couple professor's who have outright said (against the university's policy...they wanna make money too...) "Don't buy the textbook, or if you do share the cost with a friend. You'll learn a lot more in here, than in those books."

Also, I've had some classes where they just throw out a frew chapters because they make no sense. Funny. I suppose my professors could be complete doofs who don't understand the material, but for 24,000 a year (Don't even get me started on THAT one...) I would hope that I'm getting what I'm paying for.

So yes, I agree. Textbooks, as far as I'm concerned, are needlessly complicated.

Some textbooks are actually great, if I look at my HUman computer interface book the Design of Everyday things by Donald A Norman...great book.
Some of my other subjects also has perfect books, totally understandable.

Then I should've done Computer Science instead of Diagnostic Psychology. Is computer science like mathematics? If it is, then that must be fun All that "black and white" An answer is wrong in math, or it isn't.

...psychology..."Could be"..."Seems to be"..."Depending on"..."Affected by numerous factors"...pfft!

Blah...

P.S. - I have my DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition) now. If any of you start to show any sort of mental health problems...I'll know...*queue mysterious music*